Items tagged with Gmail

Google Music is no longer a "beta" product. Talk about a quick turnaround, at least compared to things like Gmail! The company teamed up with T-Mobile USA at a press conference in Los Angeles to launch Google Music, a new platform where you can upload your personal music collections for free, purchase songs from your favorite artists, and stream all your music to your devices and the Web. That's right, purchases are live. We suspect that Music Beta was intended to launch earlier this year with music purchases, but not enough record label support was available. Now, EMI / Universal / Sony are onboard...Read more...

Google's Gmail has been largely the same for years on end. When the service launched, the "threaded" view caught most people by surprise. It took a bit of time for that to become "the norm," and now, e-mail clients that lack threaded messaging are essentially seen as lackluster. So, with Google recently cleaning out services that were destined for a dead-end, they're sinking a lot of time and effort into refreshing those services that are sticking around for the long haul. Like Gmail. The company recently uploaded a clip that teases the new, revised user interface of Gmail. It caters to various...Read more...

Hotmail is one of the oldest mass-market, free email services, but it's been overshadowed for years by Gmail. Microsoft has overhauled Hotmail several times in a bid to make the service easier to use, and is preparing to launch a new suite of tools that it hopes will make the service easier to use. In a recent post on the Windows Team Blog, Dick Craddock discusses the company's war on spam and its efforts to confront the problem of "gray mail." In previous posts on our blog, we talked about how we’ve reduced true spam in the inbox to under 3% using SmartScreen filtering. But we realized that...Read more...

Google+ may be a brand-new service, but there has already been at least one case of a user breaking the rules and getting the banhammer. Google, in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, requires its users to be at least 13 years old. Last week, Alex, a 10-year-old boy from the Netherlands, created an account on the Google+ social network. Google promptly responded with a punishment after he entered his date of birth. In return for violating the terms of service for the social network, the boy was kicked off of all Google services, and, as his father wrote in a blog...Read more...

Remember when Gmail escaped Beta? Doesn't feel like that long ago, but it definitely took Google a really, really long time to finally cross that milestone. And now, the company's finally giving their Mail application the first major facelift that we can remember. For now, the company's leaving these new themes in the "optional" folder, and they've only pushed a few very minor button changes to the masses. But if you're feeling curious, you can poke around in the options / settings to see what's to come. It's just a small part of a Google-wide effort to deliver an experience that's "more focused,...Read more...

If you're an avid Gmail user, you've probably surf through all of the Labs and settings by now, uncovering all sorts of special features that normal, non-hardcore users would never think to mess with. Google provides a lot of built-in themes to customize the way your email looks, but what if you want to customize it further? There haven't been too many options prior to now, but as of this week, users can now select their own background image these, set their own colors and give their inbox a totally personalized look. If you're a photographer who just want wait any longer to have your own imagery...Read more...

Google recently added the ability to call phone numbers directly from Gmail. With this new feature, you won’t have to get out your phone and retype a number; instead, any phone number sent to you via email or chat message will appear as a link. Once you click the link, Gmail’s dialpad will automatically pop up. The feature uses Google’s voice and video plugin, so if you don’t already have it installed, you’ll be prompted to do so. Google also recognizes that people get a lot of email, and having a way to sort or filter that mail is really helpful. To that end, Google...Read more...

Don't go hitting the panic button if you suddenly notice ads in your Gmail account, you're not the victim of a virus or any other malware looking to wreak havoc on your system. So what's going on? Apparently Google got the bright (and potentially lucrative) idea of testing out display ads in Gmail user accounts. "We're always trying out new ad formats and placements in Gmail, and we recently started experimenting with image ads on messages with heavy image content," a Google spokesperson confirmed to Mashable via email. Image Credit: Search Engline Land (Greg Sterling) According to Mashable, Google...Read more...

Google has today solved a problem that has plagued avid Gmail users since the very start of the service. If you were the owner of two different Gmail accounts (one for business and one for personal use, as an example), you used to either have to check them in different browsers or sign in/out each time you wanted to switch from one to the other. But now, that's all history. Google has launched Email Delegation, a new Gmail feature that is "super useful for people who want their assistants to have access to read or respond to mail on their behalf." The feature was previously only available to those...Read more...

Your Gmail contacts are a lot more important due to the connection between them and your Android device (assuming you have one). Thus, it might be nice if you can UNDO some sort of screw-up you might have done, and that's a feature Google has just announced. The feature allows you to revert your contacts up to 30 days in the past. There are additional time points as well: 10 minutes ago, 1 hour ago, yesterday, and one week ago. There is also a custom setting, meaning you should be able to retrieve your contacts as long as the mistake isn't more than 30 daays in the past. It's sort of like System...Read more...

When we first reviewed Android 2.2 (Froyo) back in the summer, we found a lot of reasons to love it. It was a highly revamped OS, and it really put Android into a serious position against iOS. And ever since, Google has been working to make a good OS even better. With Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) set to debut next week on the Samsung Nexus S, Google is giving those stuck on 2.2 a welcome update: Gmail. Heavy Gmail users will know that while Android's Gmail client is the best on the mobile side, it still needs some tweaks. This week, Google launched Gmail for Android 2.3.2, a major update that adds...Read more...

As not expected, Facebook unveiled a messaging system on Monday, not an email system. While most have been positioning the system as a Gmail killer, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was clear in saying that: “This is not an email-killer. This is a messaging system that includes email as one part of it.”In fact, it's not called Facebook Mail, or Facemail. Instead it's just messages, and is intended to tie all your Facebook related messaging including, if you so desire, facebook.com email (which you will be able to add if you want). Interestingly, this means that corporate email at Facebook...Read more...

On the eve of Facebook's rumored announcement of a Facebook Webmail product, AOL announced an attempt to rise its email product from the ashes of AOL'e email, which is seeing its user base rapidly decline: Project Phoenix. Project Phoenix can be accessed at phoenix.aol.com. It is invite only, at least for now. It's hard to see how a Webmail refresh can stem the tide of those leaving AOL's email service. Business Insider's chart on the decline and fall of AOL's email shows the service has fallen below MySpace Mail, way down the list. Additionally, and worse news for AOL, AOL Mail provides 45 percent...Read more...

Some people love Gmail's conversation view, and some people hate it. Some just have gotten used to it. Now, however, if you don't like it, you can turn it off. In Gmail's conversation view, an email thread is linked together in one "cluster" in your inbox. It means, in effect, sorting by Subject to see a thread is no longer necessary. Still, not all like it. Toggling of Conversation View has been a requested feature for some time, and although many (like us) feel conversation view simplifies things, it can be a pain if the email client you are using doesn't support it. Obviously, going to Gmail...Read more...